Stefan van Dinther

(b. 9 June 1969, The Netherlands)

CHRZ

Stefan J.H. van Dinther is an Amsterdam-based artist and programmer, best known in the field of comics for his joint projects with Tobias Schalken. With their self-published debut 'Eiland' (1997), they instantly made their name. Where the lot of their colleagues made their debut in existing magazines like Incognito and Zone 5300, Van Dinther and Schalken - then still joined by Eric van der Heijden - chose to immediately present their very own publication. It was clear from the start that they preferred to go their own way.

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On the level of content, the avant-garde comics anthology Eiland stood out for Van Dinther's poignant graphic experiments and Schalken's poetic paintings. With the first Eiland, expectations were raised that were more than met by the follow-up second (self-published, 1998) and third and fourth Eiland (Bries, 2000 and 2001). A fifth installment was published by the French publisher Frémok in 2010. With every new Eiland, Schalken and Van Dinther kept on growing to new heights. This is vividly illustrated by their remarkable contributions to the international comics anthology Comix 2000 from the renowned French comics publisher L'Association.

Besides 'Eiland', Van Dinther has been active as a web designer and programmer since 1995, and as a teacher in sequential art with the Utrecht School of Arts. For several years, he also taught Flash animation with the Amsterdam-based Multimedialab. Van Dinther's experimental solo comic 'CHRZ' was published as a co-production between Bries and Fremok in 2005. He has also contributed to anthologies like Ng Suat Tong's Rosetta by Alternative Comics.

In 2013 he returned to comics with the gag strip 'Man en Kerel' ('Man and Guy'), of which installments are published in Zone 5300. Van Dinther has also developed a 'Man and Guy' app for Google Play, as well as an app with the children's story 'Astronaut and Isidore', that was written by his partner Simone Ruitenbeek.